An Electric Directory of Fact & Fiction— Bolt's Table of Contents

Hi, there! 👋 I'm __Lightning Bolt. ⚡

I'm all over the place on Vocal.

I mostly write fiction, yes, but I also have factual articles published in FYI and in Futurism. And I've written pleas to Vocal (for comedy) that are posted as product reviews in the Journal community. I have a three-part series in Psyche about my bad brains.

I just heard that on the horizon, Vocal will give us the means to organize our stories!

That's exciting!

I hope the form that organization tool takes is something along the lines of folders we can create, with customized titles... and then we can drag/transfer the stories we want into those folders. It would be sweet if we could go to an author's profile, see folders with various content, and then click on the folder to bring up that specified content. This would be especially beneficial to everyone writing serialized fiction!! All those continuing stories could be grouped under one catchy heading!

{{Update: my wish wasn't realized. All we got was tabs, which really didn't help much at all, and certainly doesn't allow us to organize our own offerings. 😢}}

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So This Shall Be my Table of Contents. 👇

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I appreciate you, fearless reader! ❤️ With this directory, I hope to give you a better understanding of what I have to offer. This guide should allow you to hone in on the interests we share, while also providing you with the opportunity of skipping the stories that aren't your cup of tea.

Here's what I got for you! ⚡😁👇

COMEDY

I have an ongoing series where I harvest funny memes from social media and present them for readers like you to steal to inflict on family and friends. I didn't know it was going to be a series when I started it. People seem to like it and more are forthcoming. I think some readers just want to rescue these memes return them to their nature habitat on social media. A lot of my humor is raunchy, and that is especially evident in Part 7, so be FOREWARNED. ⚡😁👍

Part #1- Meme-ing For Laughs

#2- To Meme or Not to Meme? That is the Question!

#3- When the Meme-ing Gets Tough, the Tough Get Meme-ing!

#4- They Were the Best of Memes, They Were the Worst of Memes

#5- The End Doesn't Justify the Memes

#6- We Don't Stop Meme-ing Because It Grows Old; We Grow Old Because We Stop Meme-ing. (👈awarded a Top Story honor for some bizarre reason. 🤷‍♂️)

#7- And here are the really filthy ones...

• Personally, I am not happy that this site doesn't have a Comedy Community. I have my reasons, which I wrote about recently in a story entitled What Really Sucks Ass About Vocal. It might be good for a chuckle or two.
• After writing that☝️, I went on to dream a silly little dream, imaging what a Comedy Community on Vocal Might Look Like. See if you agree with me about how much fun it could be!
• This is a little slice of satire that I wrote masquerading as a horror story— Embarrassing Secret.
• I write under a pen name on Vocal. Believe it or not, my real name is not Lightning Bolt. 😉 When I first started publishing stories here, I punctuated my name with an extra lightning strike emoji.⚡ But then, tragically, I had to eliminate that extra jolt. Read about the whole harrowing (hilarious?) experience here in my Eulogy for an Emoji.
• Finally, here's a little dark comedy. 👇 You think your love-life is hell? I guarantee, it's nothing compared to Zaazu's! 🔥His tale of woe is truly A Demonic Love Story. 🔥

MY POETRY

• The venue for this poem is disturbed... but at least stiff drinks are being served— Delusions on the Rocks 🥂
• This is primal therapy --—-- Scream Day!!! 🤪
• Can you say 'parody poetry'? — if e.e. cumings was a sailor 🐠🐟
• Love in the 26th Century is complicated —⚡Techno-Dreams Do Come True 🤖
• Serial killers in the 26th Century are complicated—⚡ The Terrible Tale of Thornhill Trash 🪓🩸🩸
• This is just surreal—> Where Hot & Cold Nightmares Collide
• Dysmorphophobes crave sex too! Wanna Burn Some Calories With Me? 🔥
• Call me overheated if you must 😉— Slut Rhyme Me 🔥❤️‍🔥🔥
• This one is personal. It's the first love poem I've written in decades— You Reminded Me This Morning Why I Asked You To Marry Me ⚡
• And here is another love poem I wrote for Pride Month 2022— Proud to Be His. 🌈

FACTUAL ARTICLES

I wrote a FYI series about Prophets throughout history— visionaries who foresaw the future in one way or another. I chose ten renowned figures, profiling two per article, with then a final overview of all ten.

• Part One includes profiles of the The Oracle of Delphi, who prophesized from about 700 B.C. to A.D. 362— and The Sibyls of Rome, who were influential from around 1200 B.C. to A.D. 83.
• Part Two takes a look at The Maya, who were at their height in Central & South America between A.D. 250 and 900— and Hildegard of Bingen, a nun living from 1098-1179 in Middle Ages Germany who advocated holistic healing, was the world's first known composer, and who had extraordinary visions her entire life.
• Part Three features two renowned visionaries... Leonardo Da Vinci— and the notorious Nostradamus.
• Part Four brings us up to the 20th Century, profiling the prolific author Jules Verne, the inventor of an entirely new genre of literature — and the other founding father of science fiction, H.G. Wells.
• Part Five finishes off this Top Ten with America's Sleeping Prophet, the extraordinary Edgar Cayce, 'the Father of Holistic Medicine'— and Marshall McLuhan, the man who coined the phrase "the global village" and who prophesized that if we don’t study the effects of technology, we’ll become its slave.
• I also wrote this Overview of the Entire Top 10 List, with additional information about all the featured luminaries.

I submitted a different Top Ten List to be also be published in FYI. Instead of posting it there, Vocal put it in Futurism, under Religion. Yes, this is about religion but why there is a religion subcategory under Futurism is bizarre, in my opinion. Every thing about Vocal's stance on religion is inconsistent and nonsensical. That said...

• Here is my List of the Top Ten Lords of Hell. Did you know that originally Satan and Lucifer were considered to be entirely different entities?

THE BEAT

Coming off the heals of my Comedy 'folder', I present to you this odd parody. 👇 It's posted in the Beat, but I would have placed it under a 'Comedy/song parody' category if there was one. It answers that timeless question...

What if the Beatles Weren't British?

More specifically...

• What if the Beatles Were American?

And now... FUTURISM.... ⚡

SCIENCE FICTION

• We start Sci-fi with a very short story about an android teacher on the fritz. This post-apocalyptic world is almost fully recovered, but there still exists Senior System Failure.
• In a completely different post-apocalyptic setting, the Turning Point came when people worldwide started transforming into werecats during nights of the full moon. Tests can now be performed to determine who is inflicted with feliocanthropy, but curiosity still might kill the cat-woman in about a Rebel With a lot of Claws.
• And in still a completely different post-apocalyptic world, an old augmented man and his bionic lion offer a young couple sanctuary... Where Wild Spider-Horses Roam. {This was the first story I published on Vocal, conceived after a very long draught; I hadn't written anything in two years. It was a small personal triumph just to tell this tale about how Old Thinking Dies Hard.}

MY SUPERHERO FICTION

Vocal seriously needs a 'Superhero' subcategory in the Fiction Community!

I'm writing a continuing series set in a universe where everyone alive receives a superpower, the legacy of the late great Wish Master, the greatest superhero to ever live. The Wish Master's final words were...

“When they need it most, let them all have their wishes come true.”

So far, each chapter in this series is a standalone story, each with a different cast of characters. They can be read in any order.

• The 1st tale is entitled Death By Chocolate? When Mary Homemaker's paranormal ability finally manifests, she is approached by a secret group of other empowered women who want to befriend her... but why? #Pride🌈
• The 2nd tale is entitled Green is My Love? When Nicolas Bluell's superpower manifests, it leads him on a sentimental journey of self-acceptance. {This is my most read story to date.} #Pride🌈
• The 3rd tale in this series is entitled Knowledge is Power? Levi Larsen is an assistant producer on a hit reality TV series called Paranormal Love Stories. Needing inspiration on how to reboot the show for a new season, Levi returns to his hometown... where an old friend allows him to eat fruit from a Tree of Knowledge. #Pride 🌈
• I have also written a Backstory for This Superpowered Universe. In both the DC and Marvel Comic book universes, the first 'supers' appeared during World War II. In the reality I am developing here on Vocal, I push my Awakening back eighty years. On my Wishworld, the first paranormal beings appeared during the 'War between the States', the American Civil War... and they weren't exactly who you might expect. Check it.

More Superpowered Stories Are Forthcoming Soon! (I'm even working on one for the Filthy Community: Sex Powers of the Rich and Famous!😉 )

HORROR

This is my forte— what I excel at, in my opinion.

Horror is my jam!

Stephen King is my idol. I mourned the recent passing of Anne Rice. {Salem's Lot rocks! Long Live Lestat!} I loathe Twilight with an all-consuming passion... because vampires DO NOT SPARKLE!!!

Most of the fiction that I have published on Vocal is horror, of one kind or another.

Let's start with this one. 👇

• Bob Bodey's Body Parts originally appeared in Issue #346 of Weird Tales Magazine, November 2007— as well as being reprinted in the Anthology: Weird Tales, the 21st Century; Volume One.

I intend to shorten this story eventually. Be forewarned, it's currently the longest story I have on Vocal. I've reprinted here exactly as it was originally published in Weird Tales.

• In this next short monster show, Jack & Jill discuss a kill, playing Graveside Games together. "I don't want to live forever... cause I know I'll be living in vane!"
• Then there is Adam, who met Rachel on the Internet, on a website for amateur poets. He thinks they have formed a special connection, but can't know for certain until he meets her in person so he can read her mind. Before he's free to love her, he has make certain she has the Virgin Soul of a Poet.
• At the most user-friendly website in the universe— www.$ellYerSoul2Satan.hel— you can make your wildest dreams come true! Sure, the price is a bit steep, but isn't true love worth making some personal sacrifices?
• It's not nice to bully that teenage geek in your high school. Not especially wise, either, considering you can never know if he'll turn into A Teenage Beehive and fuck you up. 🤷‍♂️ "For the Glory of the Queen!"

I've written a few different 'historical' horror stories...

• In the year 1844, on the Great American Plains, this is the tale of a Dead Horse Running. A great white stallion is the protagonist.
• On 11/22/1963, JFK was assassinated in Dallas, Texas... and a monster was feeding there in Parkland Hospital, When the Pain Was Too Great to Swallow.
• More recently, It Happened on 11/31/2021: a group of teenagers visited a crimson haunted house on a stormy Halloween night.
• Another monster story of mine won't start until Wednesday, January 4, 2023. That's when Zombie Hounds from Hell take over the Earth.
• In a confession to the police, a man explains why he felt compelled to kidnap his coworker... a chortling jokester who ultimately gets The Last Laugh.
• A story of revenge begins in a Taco Bell drive-through and reaches an angry conclusion in a Black and Blue Wasteland. **I refuse to be held accountable if this earworm ends up banishing you!
• Plato said, 'False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil'. Lies are like candy to the cat-loving monster who covets a Devil Woman's Tongue.
• And Fair WARNING: Flattery Will Get You Nowhere. The dog in my newest horror story comes bearing gruesome gifts.

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I've written a three-part series in Psyche. We'll call this folder...

MY PERSONAL REFLECTIONS

I reveal more about my personal situation (in hopefully an amusing way) in this series entitled I Have Bad Brains.

I have aspired to be a writer since I was a teenager. I'm now 60-years-old. And I can't spell for shit. Part 1 of 'I Have Bad Brains' is lamentations about what it's like to deal with dyslexia when you have no editor to help spell-check your work.

Part 2 of 'I Have Bad Brains' recounts my experiences from the last year+ as I began struggling with a new medical condition: I have seizures that knock me out and wreak havoc on my memory. I can no longer drive. I haven't worked in over a year. I never know when I'm going to be stricken with a 'mental reboot.'

The 3rd and final part of 'I Have Bad Brains' is hopefully an uplifting account of how I changed my point of view about my new disability, focusing on what I do have instead of dwelling on what I've lost. {At the time I'm newly posting this Table of Contents in December, 2021, this 3rd installment of the series currently has the least number of views of any story I've written.}

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One Final Note About Me...

Almost two years ago now, I started suffering from seizures. I haven’t worked since. I can no longer drive. I have meds that generally protect my brain from these assaults, but every so often, without warning, I’ll have a ‘breakthrough seizure’… and they wreak havoc on my memory. I'm engaged to a remarkable man who takes fantastic care of me, but (since I can't work and haven't been able to secure disability) my only meager source of independent income is from Vocal. If you felt an inclination to tip or make a pledge to me, I would be very grateful… and I pledge in return to do my best to entertain! I appreciate your readership.

Thank you kindly for your support!

________________Bolt⚡